Role of the Leader with Peter Chung CrossLead

Role of the leader with Peter Chung



In this episode of the CrossLead podcast, host David Silverman speaks with Peter Chung, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Summit Partners. They focus on what defines cultures of excellence in teams and portfolio companies he looks to invest in, the leadership traits that differentiate the best from the rest, what he looks for in leaders  — from their motivations, how they respond to adversity, willingness to build teams, and tell great stories. Finally, they discuss the evolution of private equity investing and the latest trends in business — such as investment fundamentals in the “meme stock” environment.“You can’t confuse a bull market for brains” – Peter Chung







Resources



Want to discuss some of these topics directly with Dave? Join the CrossLead LinkedIn Group.



The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown






















Episode Transcript

DaveWelcome to the CrossLead podcast. I’m your host, Dave Silverman at CrossLead, we exist to help teams, individuals achieve and sustain optimum performance. In today’s episode, I have the pleasure of speaking with Peter Chung. Peter is the managing director and chief executive officer of Summit Partners.When I first met Peter seven years ago, he was already an incredibly successful private equity investor, but was about to become the firm’s first CEO over 30 plus year career. He has been in the Forbes Midas less multiple times, having invested in more than 30 companies, including 18 current or formerly publicly traded companies.Today we talk about what defines a culture of excellence and teams, leadership traits that differentiate the best from the rest, and what he looks for in leaders that he invests in. We talk about the evolution of private equity investing in the latest trends in business.Thank you for tuning in. Hope you enjoyed the conversation with my friend and mentor Peter Chung. But Peter, thanks for joining us today, I really appreciate it. I’d love to just to get a chance to get to know you better today. Maybe start take us back to where you’re from and talk a little bit about your upbringing, if you would.PeterYeah, sure. Well, it’s a pleasure to be here and really, really looking forward to this conversation. But I’m the child of immigrants. I guess that’s sort of the first the genesis story of my life. My parents are came here from Korea and in the mid-sixties, like a lot of immigrants at that time, my father came here.He had just left the Air Force in Korea and he came over to pursue a graduate degree. He was going to go to Carnegie Mellon, but he got off the plane in Chicago and was waiting for my mom to come over.And so instead of just how he had to what, he had to pay his bills. So he took a job as a draftsman at an engineering firm and in the loop in Chicago and just never left.DaveSo did he have like a background in an art, in drafting?PeterOr he was. He studied engineering in college. He had a he was a pilot and then an engineer in the air in the Korean Air Force. And he he he loved America because at the time, you probably familiar with the state, but they had officer exchange programs. And so, you know, he knows every Air Force base in America because he has been to most of them anyway. So he came he came to the U.S. to study to get his PHD in engineering instead of going to Carnegie Mellon. He decided to study at the University of Illinois and and I was born and raised in Chicago.In the Chicago area, grew up in a town called Hinsdale, which is which was a wonderful place to grow up in the seventies and eighties. Because of my father’s history,